1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to a method for distributing digital files in which a digital file is stored at a predetermined location, and then updated to comprise information to identify a content provider when a user selects a reference, e.g., a link, to the digital file at the content provider, e.g., at a web site of the content provider.
2. Description of the Related Art
Vendor companies that sell products through the Internet network try to increase the likelihood that their webpage readily may be found by a user that is browsing the network and is interested in such products. A known method associated with obtaining this objective includes advertising the products on content web pages that attract users who are interested in a specific type of subject matter. These content web pages may be thematic pages about video games, cinema, music, computer programs, and the like. The advertisements are provided in the form of a link pointing to the vendor company's webpage, such that when a user selects one of the links, the user is redirected to the vendor company's webpage and the latter pays a fee to the content provider of the web pages. The fee is a function of the number of selections associated with the links. Nevertheless, for this method to be effective, the vendor companies are in contact with the content web pages, and these two entities organize the manner in which the content web pages include the advertisement links, and the manner in which the fee per user selection is paid by the vendor.
A known system addresses this issue by allowing any web page to include advertisers' advertisements and to receive a fee for it. Advertisers using this system may place advertisements in web pages of a “search network,” e.g., Google's™ search network, or the “content network.” The “search network” is formed by web pages, for example, Google's™ search box, in which a search may be conducted in the same manner as on Google's™ webpage. When a search is conducted, normal or “organic” results appear as well as advertisements in the form of “sponsored links.” The “content network” is formed by web pages in which advertisements of certain advertisers whose products are content-related appear. A known system analyzes the content of the web pages that want to host advertisements and decides which are the most appropriate for each advertisement. The advertisements contain a link to the advertiser's webpage. Each time a user selects one of these advertisements using a link, the owner of the webpage hosting the advertisement obtains a fee from the advertiser.
Nevertheless, known systems cannot effectively prevent fraudulent selections that occur when the owners of the web pages hosting the advertisements themselves select the advertisements of their own page, for the purpose of increasing the fee that the advertiser will pay the owner. Another type of fraudulent selections include a company dedicating itself to repeatedly clicking on another company's advertisement for the sole purpose of quickly reaching the maximum budget established for the advertisement, and causing the automatic deactivation thereof, thereby denying potential customers from seeing the advertisement. The problem with fraudulent selections jeopardizes both the advertisers paying for useless selections and the owners of the web pages hosting the advertisements. Consequently, many advertisers refuse to use this system or limit the amount of money they are willing to pay for the advertisements to insubstantial amounts.
Another disadvantage of known systems is that they may not respond to the specific problems involved with the sale of digital files protected by intellectual property rights. In the case of computer programs sold on-line through the Internet, a user interested in acquiring a program normally will first download a free demonstration, e.g., trial, version of the program that the user may freely use during a trial period, and then the user acquires a use license if the user chooses to purchase a license for the product. The vendor company only earns money if the user acquires a license. If its webpage receives many user visits re-sent from other web pages in which the vendor company has an advertisement, and the users download the digital files, but then choose not to acquire a license, the vendor company must compensate the advertisers for the selection despite not making a sale.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,363,356 describes a system applied to the sale of digital files protected by intellectual property rights distributed in the form of demo versions and offering a solution to the problem of fraudulent clicks. This system is also based on a plurality of webpages containing an advertisement link to the advertiser's webpage, but it allows the advertiser to pay only for the clicks that have effectively resulted in a sale. To that end, when a user clicks on an advertisement link and is redirected to the advertiser's webpage, the URL address of the webpage hosting the advertisement-link is included in the redirection. This information is received and stored by the advertiser's webpage server and is added to the digital file when the user downloads it. So when the user gets in contact again with the advertiser's webpage to purchase a use license for said file, it is possible to know what webpage the advertisement-link that brought about the purchase of the license was on.
This system is not widely used because it presents several drawbacks. A first drawback consists of the fact that it is not designed to be globally applied: each advertising company must implement its own method to be related with content webpages and to include advertisement-links therein. A second drawback of this system is that in order to add the URL address of the referrer webpage to the downloaded file, said file is encapsulated in a wrapper and said information is added in the latter. The user does not directly download the digital file he had selected, but rather the wrapper containing it. This requires carrying out a recompilation process before the download and therefore a waiting time is introduced that is too long for the normal Internet download time scale. This is the main reason that this system was never carried out to practice.